An Exhibition of Conservative Paranoia

Exhibit 55: Fighting Bigotry With Bigots

How does Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid respond to a black commentator making a reference to a "bow-tied white boy"? By calling in a white supremacist to comment on it.

By Terry KrepelPosted 5/16/2012

During a May 4 appearance on Fox News, liberal commentator Jehmu Greene referred to her conservative counterpart on the Fox panel, Tucker Carlson, as a "bow-tying white boy." Despite the factual accuracy of Greene's description -- Carlson is indeed a white male, and wearing a bow tie was a major part of his early shtick as a commentator -- that drew an indignant reaction from Carlson, and Fox host Megyn Kelly later apologized for Greene's comment.

As one might imagine, that did not go over so well in the ConWeb. But ConWeb scribes oddly decided to respond by exhibiting even more bigotry than what they accused Greene of doing.

In a May 7 Accuracy in Media article calling Greene a "black feminist" and a "racist," Cliff Kincaid brought in his favorite white supremacist, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, to weigh in on the subject:

“There is an obvious double standard according to which blacks needn’t worry about showing the kind of ‘racial sensitivity’ that is always required of whites,” says Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, an organization that is often criticized by the Left for examining racial issues from the point of view of white self-interest. Taylor’s book, White Identity, argues that whites should not be afraid to exercise the same rights as other racial and groups.

Taylor told AIM that the double-standard that guides media coverage of racial controversies excuses racially-charged comments like those of Jehmu Greene as well as Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC.

The Anti-Defamation League calls American Renaissance a "white supremacist journal" that "promotes pseudoscientific studies that attempt to demonstrate the intellectual and cultural superiority of whites and publishes articles on the supposed decline of American society because of integrationist social policies." Taylor himself has declared that we don't "need more Hispanics" and attacked Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for not "pronouncing her name the way an American would."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this isn't the first time Kincaid has invoked Taylor, nor is it the first time he tried to whitewash his history of white supremacism. In a January 2011 column, Kincaid laughably insisted that American Renaissance is merely a "conservative" group that is "politically incorrect because of its criticism of racial preference and ‘diversity' programs and immigration policies that weaken the strength of a country." Kincaid added that "there is no evidence that American Renaissance by any objective standard is a racist organization. It does deal with racial issues. But so does the Congressional Black Caucus."

A few days later, Kincaid walked back his claim, conceding that American Renaissance promotes things that sure look racist:

A controversial right-wing publication, AR publishes articles criticizing racial preference and “diversity” programs that favor minority groups at the expense of majority rights. It also examines racial differences, a taboo subject for much of the media that gives rise to frequent leftist charges of “racism” and “hate.”

Kincaid then complained that one website called AmRen "anti-government and anti-Semitic," huffing, "For the record, American Renaissance is neither anti-government nor anti-Semitic."

Related articles on ConWebWatch:

The Media Research Center, meanwhile, condoned Kincaid's embrace of a white supremacist through a judicious bit of selective quoting.

In a May 8 NewsBusters post, Matthew Sheffield quoted from Kincaid's article, but only the part noting a statement by Fox News that Greene will not be fired as a Fox commentator. Sheffield curiously made no mention of the fact that Kincaid cited a white supremacist to bolster his assertion that Greene was being "racist."

AIM was not the only ConWeb outlet to approach the Greene incident by undermining his own argument.

In his May 7 WorldNetDaily column, Massie bizarrely referred to Greene as a "liberal Negress social-justice organizer." "Negress" is an archaic term generally unused since the end of the segregation era, and for good reason: because it sounds kinda racist.

A few years back, Massie used his WND column to accuse Sen. Harry Reid of sounding like "His Uncle Bull Connors [sic] and his Uncle Orval Faubus" for committing the offense of criticizing Clarence Thomas. It's richly ironic, then. that Massie -- a black man who is chairman of Project 21, a group of black conservatives operating under the wing of a right-wing think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research -- would attempt to denigrate a black woman by using the exact same language a Connors or a Faubus would use.

Both Massie and Kincaid managed to fail spectacularly in their critique of Greene by forgetting one simple thing: If you're accusing someone of bigotry, don't sound like a bigot or invoke actual bigots in response.